A military spouse's take on blooming where you are planted. I continue to pretend I am living on my dream farm while in reality, I live on a military base, gardening in a plot alongside a Navy flightline, with half of my homesteading supplies perpetually packed in boxes and have a habit of being overly involved in every community we live in. I'm a busy mom to 2 boys and a spouse to a Navy sailor soon nearing retirement. I love this chaotic life wouldn't trade it for anything!

right now

Aug 29, 2011

One garden down...

Several more to go! The center garden got all the attention today. The side areas will have to be worked over the next week or so, but most everything there is ready to be pulled anyways. The center beds looked like they would keep producing peppers for a bit if staked, so I did that as well as pulled out all the broken storm damage and other flattened stuff.

It was like foraging for food out there - here's today's forage picked up off the ground :)

Below is what the center garden looked like right before Irene...

Here's what the "center garden" looks like now. All that's left are bell peppers, Poblanos, one tomato plant and some Zinnias.

Bug Fun... don't freak out! FYI, below these bugs are pretty much neither a pest nor a beneficial. These are Milkweed Bugs, a true bug, and their sole source of food is pretty much the Butterfly Weed plant. If you grow Butterfly Weed you may have seen them before. They certainly look menacing LOL, but won't bother any of your plants in the garden. They feed on those seedpods of the Butterfly Weed plant, which helps control the spread a bit, they do spread like wildfire every year, but are really pretty and of course you need them for the Monarchs. You can kill them if you want, but there are so many seedpods produced and gazillions of seeds anyway, I say let them be, there are certainly more offensive insects out there to go after, like the ones that actually eat MY food :)

This is just one plant.... there are many more that look the same! The bugs won't show up until it's about done flowering, so late summer is when you see them.

Here's Butterfly Weed in early summer...

We're exhausted and sweaty from working in the humidity cleaning up for what seemed like all day...imagine my surprise when I walked in for a bite to eat and saw that it was only 12:31 pm! Ugh...

Another gem from today... snuck up on Loch to see what he was doing so intently in the yard....

I wonder how long he'll keep trying!

Still listening to generators around us, really makes me feel lucky this time around. I felt kind of guilty last night when I let the dogs outside and noticed the street behind us was still pitch black, I had to turn off the tv so the neighbors wouldn't see the glow, I don't want to rub it in since I know all too well what extended power outages are like!

Those are actually attractive bugs, as bugs go. I just am not a fan of LOTS of bugs - of any kind - all in the same place. I love Loch's concentration. It will be so interesting to see where he ends up! I am so ready to just mow down my garden and get ready for next year.

Sparkless, I can't tell you how nice it was to see Loch doing that, normally when I go into the house I find that he has snuck back inside while I wasn't looking to play a video game.**Jane, I think that's why I left 'em out there, I'm so tired of battling - I looked them up to make sure they weren't staging some kind of coup for next year and then said , whatever, it's not worth messing with them LOL**Susan, me too! This week I will be thinking about putting fall stuff in, like some well-behaved lettuce and chard :)**APG, oh no! Now I feel bad for posting that LOL... hopefully next storm it will drop that stuff into your garden :)**Mama Pea, haha yep Loch's in bed now! No fire ever got going LOL. I never thought about the bugs' coloring, but now that you mention it...!!**Lorie, yes we fared really well compared to others - I just peeked out back and see that the neighbors behind us got their power back tonight! Hope you fared well too, I still have a lot of blogs to catch up on since I've been outside all day.

I still have to clean up our yard, which is littered with leaves and fallen branches. I've been procrastinating because the mosquitoes are unbearable right now. We were hoping that the storm would have driven them away but it's as if it brought even more here.

Good golly, girl! You are a total go-getter! Good for you, not letting the world get you down. I loved the video of your kidlet. We have those same bugs on our milkweed patch. After Hubby told me what they were, I stopped stepping on them. Oops!~~LoriPS Glad to hear you are alright!

Judy, we definitely were spared any big damage, I'm kind of glad the garden went kaput LOL**City Sister, hello! I was surprised at that harvest, I thought I had gotten it all before the hurricane but there were still more things hiding :)**Thomas, here too the mosquitoes came out in full force after the storm, I was covered in bites from the day after cleaning up!**Dirt Lover, the bugs certainly look menacing all posse'd up like they were going to wage war on something LOL, in this case I guess looks are decieving, they can just stay put, I'm tired of chasing insects this year so it's a good thing they won't eat my garden!

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WHAT'S MY STORY?

Welcome! I'm a native Minnesota girl, Mom, Navy Veteran as well as a Navy spouse for the past 15 years. I am also a Certified Master Gardener that got the rug pulled out from under me 2 years ago... we transferred from a Virginia home with a huge garden into government quarters with a concrete back yard at our current duty station. Even when I can't garden, I'm dreaming of it. When I'm not getting dirty in the garden, I quilt, organize things, make lists, make more lists, go sailing and volunteer with the high school sailing team my kids are on. Only a couple more years until military retirement, we need a plan!

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Why the blog name?

Military life likes to throw wrenches into plans. Too many years of thinking "I'll start a garden someday"… someday with a bigger house, a nicer yard, climate, etc, etc - I just decided to DO IT and and worry about the logistics later! We are living the oxymoron of homesteading for the mobile military family and pulling it off the best we can. Follow our adventures as we carry our homestead wherever we go!